World War II Love Stories

by Gill Paul

  Colditz: the Castle complex within the town of Colditz, near Leipzig.

  In one of his letters, Will had promised that on his return he would give the boys presents as if it were an extra birthday. As good as his word, he made some waddling wooden ducks which, he told them, walked the same way as his old cellmate Douglas Bader. That summer the family went to the Isle of Wight on vacation, and Will spent many happy days digging in the sand in the open air, building castles and dams for his children—just the therapy needed after years of fruitless tunneling in Colditz!

  It must have been difficult for Will and Kathleen to readjust to married life after so long apart, but they came from a generation that didn’t expect marriage to be one long bed of roses. Soon they were on the move again, as later in 1945 Will was sent back to Germany to translate documents for war crimes trials and 1947 found them in India at the time of the Delhi riots following Partition. Kathleen threw herself into delivering babies in a makeshift camp in which some 40,000 Muslim refugees, who had flooded across the new border, were living in horrific conditions. Next, the family (which had expanded to include another boy, Stuart, and a girl, Margaret) was sent to Tanganyika (now Tanzania) in East Africa, where Will helped organize the building of a church, before they were off again to Malaysia in 1953. Throughout their travels, Will continued to sketch and paint, Kathleen played music and taught cello, and together they were able to enjoy a richly creative marriage.

  It was a strange start to married life, having such a short time together as husband and wife before being separated for five long years, but Will and Kathleen were both determined, family-centered people who gave their all to whatever they were doing and who complemented one another perfectly.

  Colditz, winter 1941: Will (left) with his friend Captain M. van der Heyvel of the Royal Netherlands Indies Army. They were known as “Andy and Vandy.”

  Bill & Norma Kay Moore

  Bill wanted to be a farmer, but these dreams were put on hold when he was drafted into the Army in 1943.

  Norma wasn’t looking for romance when she volunteered. She hoped to travel and see more of the world.

  All the girls liked Bill Moore, but when he cheekily asked Norma for a date while he was on the way to meet another girl, at first she refused. Fortunately, he was a very persuasive man who wouldn’t take “No” for an answer…

  Both Bill and Norma came from big families: he was the tenth of 14 children who grew up in Tuskegee, Alabama; she was the ninth of 11 from Hillburn, New York, brought up by a single mother after her father died at an early age. On leaving high school, Bill worked as a barber in order to pay for his training as a mechanic and farmer at the Tuskegee Institute. One semester he was taught by the renowned scientist George Washington Carver, who designed methods with which poor southern farmers could grow crops in soil that had been depleted by decades of cotton-growing. Farming was what Bill most wanted to do, but he was drafted into the Army in October 1943 and assigned to truck driving on account of his mechanical skills.

  An all-black regiment, the 41st Engineers, perform a flag ceremony, June 1942.

  Norma was at a cousin’s birthday party on December 7, 1941, when the music playing on the radio was interrupted by an announcer telling them the grave news that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor. War was officially declared by Franklin D. Roosevelt the next day. In a burst of patriotism, some of Norma’s brothers immediately enlisted, and she decided she too wanted to do her part. “I loved my country,” she would tell her family later in life. “I signed on to serve my country and to see the world, and to send home money to Mama, who really needed it badly.” Norma had clerical and secretarial training, so after signing up for the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) she was sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, to do clerical work for the Army’s medical departments. She was keen to be sent to Europe, but for the early years of the war she was considered more useful in South Carolina.

  “I signed on to serve my country and to see the world.”

  On Easter Sunday 1944, Norma was sitting on the grass outside her barracks reading a book of poetry when Bill came by. “All I could see then was the prettiest girl in the world sitting by herself,” he would later recall. He was on his way to a date with another girl in Norma’s barracks, but he stopped dead in his tracks and began chatting to Norma, then asked if he could take her out. She rebuked him that it wasn’t right to have a date with one girl then ask another out, but he was a talkative, persuasive man and he just kept on asking until she gave in. “I do not know why,” she would say. “Ordinarily I would have scolded him.”

  It was “probably the craziest thing I ever did,” she would say with a chuckle.

  They had a few dates and found they both liked walking in the countryside and had a love of nature. After walks they went for an ice cream soda at the soda fountain shop on the base and all the time they talked about their lives. “I did not join the army to meet a man,” Norma used to say, adding that she knew a lot of the other girls did. But this one was very romantic and she soon found herself being swept off her feet.

  Bill knew that he would soon be sent to Europe and he also knew that he couldn’t risk letting this very special girl slip through his fingers, so two weeks after meeting Norma he asked her to marry him. She was normally a reserved, cautious person but found herself saying “Yes.” It was “probably the craziest thing I ever did,” she would say with a chuckle. On June 12th, they tied the knot in a small chapel wedding in South Carolina, with her brother Stanley the only family member able to attend. They had a few days’ honeymoon on the South Carolina shore and then he was shipped out to England. They said goodbye with absolutely no idea when—or if—they would ever see each other again.

  Driving the Red Ball Express

  After the D-Day landings in Europe, as Allied combat troops pushed forward through France, there was an urgent need for supply convoys to get food, ammunition, artillery, medical supplies, and gasoline to the front line. The French railway system had been destroyed by Allied bombing raids and by Resistance sabotage in the weeks before D-Day to prevent the German Army from reaching the Normandy coast, so trains could not be used. Instead, a huge truck convoy system, called the Red Ball Express, was created. Three-quarters of the truck drivers were African-American, and Bill Moore was one of them.

  RACIAL SEGREGATION IN WARTIME

  In 1939, fewer than 4,000 African-Americans were serving in the US forces and only 12 of them were officers. The Army was strictly segregated, with African Americans in all-black units, while the Air Corps simply didn’t accept African-American pilots until October 1940 and the Marine Corps excluded them for most of the war. Even so, more than a million African-Americans joined up during the war and made a significant contribution to the war effort, although many were confined to subordinate roles such as cooks, janitors, and waiters. There was racial integration in the British Commonwealth forces, but the American commanders still believed that “mixing of the races” would lead to trouble. Famous African-American units such as the Tuskegee Airmen, the 761st Tank Battalion, and the 452nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion performed with such bravery, as did units like Bill Moore’s working alongside white units, that they helped pave the way for President Truman’s order, signed in 1948, to desegregate the troops.

  March 10, 1945: William E. Thomas and Joseph Jackson display their “Easter eggs for Hitler” (actually 155mm artillery shells) shortly before firing them.

  The first Red Ball Express set off on August 25, 1944. Three thousand trucks drove in convoys, 60 yards apart, and speed limiters in the engines meant they all traveled at exactly 25 mph. “I remember thinking we must look like a row of ducks,” Bill used to say. German planes swooped overhead and fired at them, but fortunately he wasn’t hurt. They were constantly on the lookout for enemy aircraft, landmines, and potential ambushes, making it a hair-raising experience, but they reached the front line, unloaded their cargo, and on the return trip were given the solemn duty of carrying
back the coffins of American soldiers who had been killed.

  Drivers of the 666th Quartermaster Truck Company covered at least 20,000 miles each across Holland, France, and Central Europe.

  After that first convoy, Bill and his friends disobeyed direct orders by taking the speed limiters off their trucks so that they would have more flexibility under attack and, equally importantly, so that they could finish their runs as quickly as possible. At night they had to drive with tape over their headlights, reducing them to narrow cat’s-eye slits, making the runs even more nerve-racking. But Bill did at least have a machine gun on board and on one occasion tried to shoot down a German plane, though without success.

  Back at base between missions, Bill was much in demand for his hair-cutting skills, and he enjoyed the camaraderie with the men and the healthy competition between Red Ball drivers. According to him, African-Americans were much better drivers and white guys “would grind gears like coffee.” He wrote regular letters to Norma and she wrote to him, but it was hard not being able to see the wonderful woman he had known for only three short months before he came to Europe.

  By November 1944, the Red Ball Express was no longer needed, because railway lines had been repaired and gas pipelines installed in sufficient quantity. Supplies could also now be brought in through the Belgian ports. Bill was still driving a truck, but now his responsibilities included collecting Americans who had been held in prisoner-of-war camps and transporting German soldiers who had surrendered. And as spring arrived, he was handed an altogether more harrowing job.

  Combat Barber Bill: it was through chatting with an officer whose hair he was trimming that Bill learned Norma was going to be in Rouen in June 1945.

  On April 4, 1945, Bill was part of the Army that liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp. A little Jewish man “who looked like a dead man walking” staggered up to Bill, called him “‘an American,” then fell into his arms and hugged him “like nobody ever hugged me in my life.” It was desperately moving for Bill on many different levels: he looked at these people, most of them half-dead, and wondered how God could let men do this to each other; and he also realized it was the first time anyone had ever called him an American and that it was “like I was as good as any American he was like to find.” Back home, he was called many things but none of them were “American.”

  A military policeman directs traffic on a Red Ball route. Approximately three-quarters of Red Ball drivers were African-American.

  RED BALL ACHIEVEMENTS

  By mid-August, the American First and Third Armies had advanced so far across France that they had become separated from their supply teams and had to stop due to what General Patton called a critical shortage of “beans, bullets, and gas.” The commanders sat down to brainstorm a solution and the Red Ball Express was devised. Two Red Ball routes would run from Cherbourg, where the trucks were loaded, to a forward base at Chartres, southwest of Paris: the northern route was for supplies going out to the troops and the southern one was for the return journey. At its height, there were 5,958 trucks carrying about 20,000 tons of supplies a day on journeys of around 400 miles for a round trip. The name “Red Ball” came from a railroad term for goods designated “perishable” and requiring shipment as a priority, and the sides of the trucks and signposts along the routes had a characteristic red ball painted on them indicating that they should be given priority over civilian traffic. During the three months it was in operation, the Red Ball Express broke all previous records for supply of goods to the military. As Colonel John S. D. Eisenhower, son of the Allied supreme commander, later put it when recalling the events of the time, “Without Red Ball the advance across Europe could not have been made.”

  As well as Buchenwald, Bill was involved in the liberation of prisoners from Dora-Mittelbau on April 10th and Mauthausen on May 5th and, throughout that period, he helped to transport survivors of Birkenau, part of the Auschwitz complex. He saw some shocking sights that would remain with him for the rest of his days.

  A Surprise Reunion

  After Bill left for Europe, Norma was eager to go there as well, but the Army was still strictly segregated, so there weren’t many units she could join. Eventually, in the winter of 1944–45, she was assigned to the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion based in Birmingham, England, a unit consisting of 855 African-American women and led by Major Charity Adams Early, the highest-ranking African-American woman in the war. Their role was crucial for the morale of the troops, because they helped to make sure that letters reached the correct recipients—a mammoth task, since at this stage there were some seven million Americans in Europe whose constant movements brought about an estimated 30,000 changes of address per day. All were waiting for mail from their families and friends at home, and the women of the 6888th worked three shifts, seven days a week, to try and get it delivered in good time.

  Norma was delighted to be able to visit Shakespeare’s birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon while stationed in Birmingham.

  They got along well with the local people in Birmingham and the Birmingham Sunday Mercury noted: “These WACs are very different from the coloured women portrayed in films … [they] have dignity and proper reserve.” In the spring of 1945, they were sent to Paris and Norma was astonished and delighted that wherever they went people offered to buy drinks for them, so grateful were they for the liberation of their country. It was quite different from the treatment she was used to at home in Hillburn, where the schools and public amenities were racially segregated.

  While in Rouen, members of the 6888th marched across the town square in memory of Joan of Arc, who was burned at the stake there on May 30, 1431.

  In June 1945, as her first wedding anniversary approached, Norma was based in Rouen. Bill discovered her location from an officer whose hair he was cutting and determined that he would see his bride on their anniversary. He would never have been approved for leave, so on June 12th he went AWOL, borrowing jeeps, trucks, and motorcycles to make an epic journey across France from Germany. He messaged Norma’s captain that he was coming, asking her to keep it a secret.

  Unsuspecting, Norma was sitting in a cafe with a girlfriend when in walked her grinning husband. It was the first time they had seen each other in almost a year. “Well, we just hugged and kissed,” she recalled. He’d brought her a tin of semi-sweet Swiss chocolate as an anniversary present, and she said that, though it was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted, seeing him was the best gift of all. He couldn’t stay long without risking court martial, so he turned around and drove all the way back within 24 hours. He got along so well with his commanding officers that he escaped punishment for the exploit; his wife, of course, would never forget the romantic gesture he made that day.

  …they loved each other with a fierce passion from those early days back in Fort Jackson…

  “After all the war and ugliness, I had to see the person I loved the most,” he explained. Norma helped to remind him of the good things in life at a time when he was seeing too many of the bad.

  Making a Life Back Home

  Norma was the first to return to the United States, in September 1945, with Bill following in November. They were joyfully reunited at her mother’s home in Hillburn, where the rest of her family were able to meet Bill for the first time. They traveled south to Tuskegee for him to finish his training, but were back in Hillburn for the birth of their first child, Nancy. Bill got a job as a mechanic, servicing and repairing trucks, and he continued to work as a self-employed barber. In 1960, he became one of the first black members of the New York State chapter of the International Union of Operating Engineers, and he earned a good salary, but an accident at work in the early 1970s caused severe burns to his hands and forced him to take early retirement. By that time Bill and Norma were proud to own a lovely three-bedroom house with ten acres of land in a town called Pine Bush, where their four children went through school alongside the children of their white neighbors.

  Bill and Norma
were quite different characters—he was always the more gregarious of the two—but they loved each other with a fierce passion from those early days back in Fort Jackson right through to the end of their lives.

  Desmond Paul & Louisa Henry

  With the boys in France, 1944. Desmond, sporting a moustache, is on the left side of the front row.

  Photograph of Louisa, with the inscription, “Paul, mon amour, de tout mon coeur, Loup’” (Paul, my love, with all my heart, Loup).

  War disrupted Desmond and Louisa’s plans for the future, but far from ruining their lives, it enabled them to improve their prospects and achieve a better standard of living than they might have otherwise—not least because it brought them together.

  From an early age, it was obvious that Desmond was an unusual boy: he preferred reading encyclopedias to playing football and spent hours poring over the boiler parts catalogs his father brought home from work. His hero was Leonardo da Vinci, and Desmond also aspired to be an artist and an inventor, spending his pocket money on drawing paper upon which he avidly sketched. So strong was his urge to draw that his parents even let him daub his bedroom walls! As devout Catholics, Desmond’s parents had to petition to get him into Huddersfield College, a Church of England establishment in Yorkshire, but the only locally available grammar school. Once there, he shone academically and also acquired a reputation for pulling stunts: a particular favorite was placing a paper bag filled with homemade flashpowder on the tramlines, which created a mini explosion when crushed by tram wheels; this caused the tram to brake suddenly and greatly puzzled the tram driver, who would leap out of his cab to look under the vehicle only to find nothing there. Desmond passed all his school subjects—including French—with flying colors, but unfortunately the family couldn’t raise the money for him to study A levels and go to university, so at the age of 16 he sat the council exam to become a junior clerk in the offices of Huddersfield Waterworks.